A brewer in Pittsburg has claimed to have made the first commercial American Kvass:
For Growlers this week: Big Hop Harvest (will this be the last week?), Black Strap Stout, East End Witte, and for the FIRST TIME ANYPLACE: Session Ale #5, Kvass – the first commercial Russian Bread Beer brewed in the United States!
I love Kvass and wish it were more available outside Europe.
Nine Parts looks like it might be really good:
A portrait of the extraordinary (and ordinary) lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women: a sexy painter, a radical Communist, doctors, exiles, wives and lovers. This work delves into the many conflicting aspects of what it means to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq. An unusually timely meditation on the ancient, the modern and the feminine in a country overshadowed by war.
I noted that the star of the show is, in fact, of Iraqi-American decent:
Originally from Michigan, Heather divides her time between New York and Los Angeles. Her father is from Iraq and her mother is American.
The reviews all seem to be favorable, like this one:
The birth of this play almost reads like poetry: In 1993, against the backdrop of gargantuan portraits of Saddam Hussein’s oppressive face, Raffo discovered in an art museum a painting of a nude woman against a barren tree. Her research revealed that the free-spirited and notorious artist Layla Attar had recently been killed in a bombing raid. Thus began a journey that brought her further into her homeland, back into the arms of her relatives and ultimately into the lives of the numerous Iraqi woman who form the backbone of the show. Some plays seem to slip out of a playwright; others clunk. The rare, exceptional ones seem to burst out as an intense gut reaction – Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire is such a play.
Maybe it’s because of Halloween, but there are some surprisingly good developments in international news stories today:
Hizbullah confirms (indirect) talks with Israel
Let’s hope that tomorrow, when the costumes come off and the partying is over, people continue working together to solve complex security issues and the news remains positive. Ok, ok, so Halloween isn’t global, but you know what I mean; we often act more like ourselves when we can find solace in another persona.
Then again, maybe it is global:
Two sharp-eyed Germans saw what they thought were masked bank robbers in a car with tinted windows in front of a bank and called police, but the occupants turned out not to be thieves but children in Halloween masks.
A sampling of the slope and notes to self:
And lastly, for those who trust that Bush would never use martial law without reason, what about the next person in office? What about someone as ignorant and hateful as…Ann Coulter?
Brendan Nyhan, “Screed: With Treason, Ann Coulter once again defines a new low in America’s political debate”, June 30, 2003:
No longer content to merely smear liberals and the media with sweeping generalizations and fraudulent evidence, she has now upped the ante, accusing the entire Democratic Party as well as liberals and leftists nationwide of treason, a crime of disloyalty against the United States.